July 26, 2010

Stolen iPhone tracked to thief's house

Taxi drivers the world over might want to think twice about pinching their passengers' belongings following the vigilante justice dished out by Angela Devery, who lost her iPhone last week after a night on the tiles.

Last Friday night, with a few cocktails under her belt, Devery, 30, from Melbourne's Carlton North, left her phone in the back of a taxi.

Thankfully, Apple provides a service to iPhone users called MobileMe, which allows them to pinpoint the location of their phones on a map. There have been several cases around the world in which people have used the service to track down thieves.

Devery's younger brother Jimi jumped online and was quickly able to track the iPhone to an address in Box Hill.

"I went to the police but there wasn't much they could do as, at this stage, the phone couldn't be considered stolen," Devery, an executive assistant at ANZ, said.

Unable to get an answer when calling the phone, and with time of the essence, Devery decided to take matters into her own hands and go to the address and knock on the door herself.

"[The police officer] told me to do that, and if it wasn't the taxi driver to call back and he would consider the phone stolen," she said.

Devery and her mother, Cathie, drove to the house in Box Hill and Devery knocked on the door nervously. She says that if the phone had been stolen "it may not have been the smartest idea in the world to rock up at the thief's house".

A woman answered and confirmed that her husband drove a taxi and had been working the night before. Devery said she had come to get her phone back.

"She went and got her husband, an older Greek taxi driver with very broken English, to whom I explained the situation and asked for my phone back," she said.

"He said he didn't have it. I asked if I could look in his cab. He said the cab wasn't there."

Devery explained that she had tracked the phone to his address, but the driver said that was impossible and repeatedly denied that he had seen the phone.

"He suggested it might be in the cab, which was at the depot, but I knew it wasn't because the tracking service had given me his address, not the depot address - and I had my sister log in only minutes before I knocked on his door to make sure it was still there," Devery said.

"So in the end I gave him my phone number, took his phone number and told mum in a very offhandish matter, whilst he was in earshot, that I would just have to call the police back now that it was a 'criminal matter'."

Devery and her mother got back in the car and called the police officer to give him the news. As they were talking, the driver ran across the road to his car (not the taxi).

"I was yelling at mum 'follow him mum, pursue him!' - and then informed [the police officer] that we were in pursuit of the taxi driver: he was currently on foot, and we had a visual," Devery said.

She called her sister Cate for an update on where her iPhone was and Cate confirmed it was on the move.

But the pair were too slow and the taxi driver got away. Fortunately, Cate was able to keep track of the phone through MobileMe and provide directions.

"Mum admitted at this stage that it was pretty exciting and I started calling her Watson (because I was Sherlock)," Devery said.

They eventually tracked the driver to Middleborough Road and pulled up a block from where he had stopped.

"We didn't really know what we were doing, or what to do next, but then he called me," Devery said.

"I asked whether he had found my phone and he said not yet but he was just about to check."

The driver then pretended to look for the phone for several minutes before announcing he had found it.

"He asked where I was, and I told him I was on Middleborough Road. He sounded a bit surprised and a bit nervous as he disclosed that he was also on Middleborough Road," she said.

Devery approached the car and got her phone back, but declined the police officer's offer to press charges.

"I think he got a scare from the whole experience and I couldn't live with myself if he lost his job as a result," she said.

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